
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 




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THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



BORN OCTOBER 27. 1858 
DIED JANUARY 6. 1919 



REPORT OF 

MEMORIAL MEETING HELD AT 

ELMWOOD MUSIC HALL, BUFFALO. N. Y. 

WEDNESDAY. JANUARY 8. 1919 

AT THE HOUR OF HIS FUNERAL 

AT OYSTER BAY 



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COMMITTEE 

EDWARD J. BARCALO WALTER P. COOKE 

WILLIAM H. CROSBY WILLIAM A. MORGAN 

ANSLEY WILCOX 



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PRINTED BY J. W. CLEMENT CO.. BUFFALO 



Mr. Charles P. Norton. Chancellor of the University of 
Buffalo, presided. 

Chairman NORTON: The meeting will be opened by Coun- 
cilman Charles M. Heald reading the proclamation of Mayor Buck 
to the citizens of Buffalo. 

Councilman HEALD then read the following proclamation: 

Theodore Roosevelt, a most distinguished and beloved citizen 
of the United States, died peacefully at his home at Oyster Bay in 
the early morning of January 6. His body will be committed to its 
last resting place on Wednesday, January the eighth. 

The people of Buffalo have had an especial interest in the 
career and in the personality of this great man. It was here that he 
became president of the United States, after the tragic death of 
President McKinley in September, 1901, during our Pan-American 
Exposition. Here he took the oath of office, held his first cabinet 
meeting and issued his first proclamation, and from here he followed 
the body of his former chief to the grave. 

He was a frequent visitor in Buffalo at public gatherings of 
all kinds, a powerful speaker and an inspiring leader of thought and 
action among our people. 

It is fitting, therefore, that the people of Buffalo should gather 
in some meeting place on the day of his funeral, to pay tribute to 
his memory and to express their grief at his untimely death. 

Now, therefore, 1, George S. Buck, Mayor of the City of 
Buffalo, do request our people to assemble for this purpose on 
Wednesday, the eighth day of January, 1919, at 12:30 o'clock, at 
the Elmwood Music Hall. 

Given under my hand this seventh day of January, 1919. 

(Signed) GEORGE S. BUCK. Mayor. 

Chairman NORTON: Citizens of Buffalo and Fellow Ameri- 
cans: Pursuant to the proclamation which you have just heard 
we have met together at this noon hour while the last rites are being 
paid to Theodore Roosevelt in the little church at Oyster Bay. 
We are one in spirit with the band of mourners there. We are met 
to meditate for a while upon this man, our fellow-citizen, our fellow- 
American, our pride and our glory, and in spirit we stand at his 
graveside with the shadowy millions of the American people and 
pay our tribute to him as his body descends into the grave on the 
hillside in the Memorial Cemetery. I have been asked to act as 



chairman of this meeting because Theodore Roosevelt and I were 
at Harvard College and were graduates of the Class of 1880. My 
part in this meditation is a brief statement of the influence on his 
life of Harvard College. He was there between the years of 1876 
and 1880, between the ages of 18 and 22 — that forniative period 
when youth receives its impressions, when it reaches out and lays 
hold upon its ideals, when there comes to it the aspiration of great 
thoughts and great motives, more so than at any other period of a 
young man's life. The Harvard College of my day was instinct 
with a new spirit, a vivid sympathy with a new force — reform. I 
have little doubt this spirit influenced the whole after life of 
Theodore Roosevelt. I have little doubt that then, as, wdth a 
young man's enthusiasm, with a young man's idealism, he sat 
looking into the world to find his work there, the voice of the Lord 
spoke in the night and said unto him: "Arise! The old order 
of things has passed! Behold the new!" 

As I look around me I see the veterans of the battles of the 
' seventies and the eighties, the men who fought the fight of those 
days. Although we perhaps were not conscious of it then, still, 
later years have revealed the fact that those years were a transition 
period in the history of America. From July 4th, 1776, to the day 
in April when Grant sent to Lincoln his famous telegram, " Lee 
has surrendered," the minds and energies and thoughts and lives 
and money of men were devoted to making our form of government 
firm, sound and stable for an agency fit to proclaim through the 
means of democracy liberty throughout the world. George Wash- 
ington, John Marshall, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln and 
Ulysses S. Grant each had fought his fight and passed on and left 
to the coming generations the heritage of carrying on the great 
purpose of the American Republic they had founded; to proclaim 
and make democracy safe for the world. This was the call to the 
new order of things that Theodore Roosevelt heard and for which 
1 believe he was raised up by the Lord God Almighty to carry on 
its tremendous work, the work of the new day. He heard this 
call, this young knight, this call, old as St. Paul, old as time, " The 
old things have passed! Behold the new! " And he took up his 
sword and went forth to the conflict to carry on the work which 

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he was called to do. You will remember, you men of the eighties, 
that that period was typified by one word, reform. The old order 
had brought forth evils incidental to it which had to be hewn away 
and he took up his sword to carry out that work and he did carry 
it out. As an Assemblyman he typified reform, as a Police Com- 
missioner he typified reform, as a Civil Service Commissioner he 
typified reform and as Governor of the State of New York he was 
the standard-bearer of reform, the reform which purified the old 
order of things and started them upon their course toward the 
achievement of the new. Now in his later years this purpose of 
his youth, the evolution of his life and the consummation of his 
life-work have been rendered clearer to us all. His life and life- 
work stand forth written across the face of history, embodied in 
one great word, Americanism — ^the Americanism which is to make 
democracy safe for the world, the Americanism which is to proclaim 
to the world the brotherhood of man, the Americanism which is to 
find practical means and ways of government to make this tre- 
mendous doctrine of Democracy possible and practicable. 

And so today at this hour of one o'clock, while the service at 
Oyster Bay is being read over his body and his body is being com- 
mitted to the grave, the first thought and message of this meditation 
which I as his college classmate bring to you is that his college life 
formed him for the work of the age and that this knight of the new 
reform, this leader of the new age, this giant fighter, this strong, 
wise, brave, true, honest, earnest man — the type of American of 
our desire— was raised up to be the ages' prophet and the prophet 
of the new order of things, the new day, the new world. So peace 
be to his ashes. And as the bugles sound taps and the fighting men 
salute the chief who is passing into the Valley of the Shadow let us, 
with the millions of Americans standing in thought by his grave, 
bid farewell in prayer to the mighty spirit of this great American 
that has gone to God. 

Will the audience please stand while the Reverend Samuel 
Van Vranken Holmes, of Westminster Church, leads us in prayer? 

Dr. HOLMES: Almighty God, who art infinite in wisdom, 
sovereign in power, and whose are the eternal years, we bless Thee 

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for Thy goodness and loving-kindness to our land and people. 

It has pleased Thee to raise up for the guidance and inspiration 
of this Republic strong men and true, men of wisdom, courage and 
faith. For all the prophets and prophet's sons who have enriched 
the Nation's life, we give Thee praise. 

But especially do we bless Thee for the character and career 
of that patriot and leader of the people in whose memory we are 
met at this time. For his rugged honesty and undeviating fidelity 
to duty; for his fine scorn of all things mean and base; for the delight 
he found in all human interests; for his vision of social justice and 
well being; for the vital inspiration he gave to young manhood 
everywhere; for the public services he rendered this nation of free 
men; for his incorruptibility and dignity before kings, we bring Thee 
most humble and hearty thanks. 

We remember before Thee his sincere and simple faith; his 
honest and persistent endeavor after personal worth; the purity and 
tenderness of his domestic life — the loyalty of his friendships and 
the clear flame of his burning patriotism. 

Now that he has passed to wider activities and a more 
abundant life, we pray that his mantle may fall on other, even 
though lesser, prophets, upon whom the country must rely for 
inspiration, leadership and courage. Make us all worthy partakers 
of the fruits of his labors, munificent in blessing, and whose fame is 
henceforth in all the earth. 

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we pray that Thy special 
favor may rest upon those whose hearts are heavy this day with a 
deep personal grief. May Thy comfort be plenteously given to the 
close kindred of Thy servant departed, to those who mourn the loss 
of husband and father. Sustain them richly by Thy grace and 
give them the divine peace that passeth understanding. 

And now, our Father, remember in mercy the nation that Thy 
servant loved. Bless the President of the United States and give 
him wisdom in all matters of civic responsibility and international 
concern. Bless all who occupy high place in the councils of the 
Republic. Bless our people the land over, who are the poorer today 
because of the passing of a great prophet and leader. May they 
and we follow his goodly example in devotion to duty, in steadfast- 

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ness of spirit, and in service of the state. And grant. Oh God 
Most High, that Thy Kingdom may come in this land for which our 
fathers and their sons have fought and died. 
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen. 

(Singing of the Battle Hymn of the Republic by the Westminster 
Quartet.) 

Chairman NORTON: Dr. George Frederic WilHams will address 
the meeting on The Human Side of Theodore Roosevelt. 

The Reverend George Frederic Williams. Rector of 

St. Mary's-on-the-Hill, spoke as follows: 

My dear friends: We stand today in the shadow of a great 
national loss. The wheels of industry are stilled a moment and 
our whole national life has stopped that we may pay a tribute of 
admiration and of praise to one of the most distinguished sons of 
this great American nation. The strenuous life is stilled, the 
vibrant tongue is silent, the trenchant pen has ceased its epigrams. 
History alone will be able to do justice to the manifold activities 
of this remarkable man and time alone will be able to reveal the 
splendor and the breadth of his achievements. 

I stand before you today neither as biographer, apologist, 
nor orator, but merely one of yourselves, the mouthpiece — as it 
might be said — speaking the things that are in your hearts and 
mine, the tribute we would pay to the manhood, the splendid 
character, the wonderful humanity of this, our departed hero and 
friend. His was one of the compelling personalities of the world. 
It is a rare attribute of some few great lives that they carry with 
them a sense of their own importance and dignity. 

I heard Theodore Roosevelt speak at the San Diego Exposition 
and when he stood up before the great crowd of thirty thousand 
men and women at once you felt that " here is the master, here is 
the man whose dominance of personality sways all." As I had heard 
him on the West Coast I heard him again in New York City in 
the temple of the great Grand Lodge of Masons. The same sense 
was there — his personality overwhelming. When he spoke it was 
not only the spoken voice it was the thousandfold radiating emana- 

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tion of his personality. Such men as PhiHpps Brooks, such men as 
the sainted Prince of Belgium Cardinal Mercier, such men as 
Marshal Foch; these have on them the stamp and the image of the 
Divine. 

As one attempts to unfold the marvelous picture of this person- 
ality one is overwhelmed. The first note is that he was a man of 
action, typically American in that; a man who did things; a man to 
whom the calls of life and of duty were vibrant and demanding. 
He was always alert. And when one thinks of the marvelous 
versatility through which this active spirit found expression one is 
astounded. How could we expect to find in one personality the 
soldier, the statesman, the diplomat, the hunter, the naturalist, the 
patriot, the poet? Once in a hundred years perhaps we have such 
an example. Versatility is no new quality in the American mind. 
The pioneers had to be versatile in order to survive. If a man 
could not meet the exigencies of the situation and from his own 
ingenuity devise means to overcome obstacles there never would 
have been a western world of today. But in this man versatility 
reached a height unknown perhaps before. In whatever way we 
look upon him — in searching for strange forms of life in tropical 
jungles, in leading a charge at San Juan Hill, in speaking in German 
before a German audience and in French before a gathering in 
Paris, — speaking as President of the United States or in writing 
those bitter — sometimes bitter articles, where will you find his like 
in all the world? The man of action! The man of versatility! 

And then there was in him that keen sense of truth and honor. 
When Germany violated the neutrality of Belgium, almost alone 
he spoke out. We did not understand. We were amazed and 
stunned. We did not see its significance. We were not less 
aroused than he, once we saw it; but he saw it first. His quick 
sense of honor at once spoke against this brutal outrage, the invasion 
of the rights of a neutral, and against this he launched his sentence 
of righteousness. He coined the phrase "There can be no neutrality 
between right and wrong." He spoke with the voice of the prophets 
of old. 

He was an interpreter of the human mind to itself. Only 
once, perhaps only once in a generation does some such man step 

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forward, capable of interpreting the human mind to itself; of taking 
from your mind and mine the hidden depths and truths and opening 
them out and speaking them that we may see them and rejoice in 
them. In his sense of honor and justice, in his supernatural sense 
of righteousness, he stands easily ahead of every man of his time. 

And, my dear friends, the last word is his deep and earnest 
piety. He was steeped to the lips in the Bible. How many of 
you until he mentioned it knew of the curse of Meroz? If when 
you go home you will look in the Fifth Chapter of Judges you will 
read the story; you will find that in the great crisis of the Israelitish 
people, when they demanded the help of Meroz against a foreign 
invasion — against a common foe — it was refused and they went 
down to battle alone. In the song of triumph it says: "Curse 
ye Meroz, said the Angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabit- 
ants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the 
help of the Lord against the mighty." 

This was our man, our idol, our ideal — Theodore Roosevelt— 
the pious man, the man of prayer, the man of earnest thought, the 
man of plain, simple convictions, the man of out-spoken truth and 
honesty. This is the character we commemorate today. This is 
the man to whom we bring the tribute of our admiration and our 
tears. 

Can such a man really die? Your presence here today and the 
presence of millions over this land commemorating synchronously 
with the services at his own home the passing of this great and 
wonderful national character, indicates that he cannot die. 

I am reminded of Tennyson's poem. Wages: 

"Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song. 

Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea — 

Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong — 
Nay, but she aimed not at glory, no lover of glory she: 

Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. 

The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust. 

Could she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? 

She wants no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just. 
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: 

Give her the glory of going on, and not to die." 

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I believe this typifies to you and me the deathless influence 
of this great and splendid soul. 

When Tennyson himself lay dead Sir Edwin Arnold sent a 
poem to be read at his funeral, in response to Tennyson's own 
" Crossing the Bar." I believe it typifies the high repose of this 
gallant and valiant soul dying thus untimely: 

"No 'moaning of the bar!' Sail forth, strong Ship! 

Into that bourne which has God's face for a far light; 
Not dirge, but proud farewell, from each fond lip; 

And praise — abounding praise — and fame's faint starlight. 

Lamping thy tuneful soul to that large noon 

Where thou shalt quire with angels. Words of woe 

Are for the unfulfilled — not thee, whose noon 
Of genius sinks full-orbed, glorious, aglow. 

No 'moaning of the bar!' Musical drifting 

Of Time's waves, towards the Eternal Sea; 
Death's soft wind all thy gallant canvas lifting, 

And Christ thy Pilot to the Peace to be." 

So today, my friends, we come to lay him down, the idol of 
our love and veneration, the patron saint of our civic and domestic 
virtues, to lay him down in the presence-chamber of the King of 
Kings. May he rest in peace and may God's light perpetually 
shine upon him. 

Chairman NORTON: The Westminster Quartet will sing. 
Whereupon the audience rose and the Westminster Quartet 

sang The Star Spangled Banner, 

The Chairman then introduced the REVEREND HENRY A. 
MOONEY. of St. Joseph's Old Cathedral, who addressed the 
meeting as follows: 

Mr. Chairman and fellow-Americans: America is rich in her 
dead. 

When the great God wished to make a home for Liberty He 
looked over all the peoples of the world and saw that there was 
little hope for her to find sanctuary, permanently, in the old lands; 

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so He sent a great explorer out across the untried seas and Columbus 
placed foot on the virgin soil of America; and from that day on. 
Liberty began to build her home; she formed, moulded and shaped 
her great sanctuary; and the good God was with her. Side 
by side — for liberty is the first throb of God's heart — Providence 
and Liberty walked over the blue seas and led the people of every 
color from snowy hills and sunlit valleys into this new sanctuary 
that God, in His infinite Wisdom and Providence, had builded for 
His own children. The oppressed of every clime streamed here in 
untold numbers. After God had peopled this land He raised up 
great leaders, from among the sons and daughters who had known 
the whip! The great leaders He took from strange places — strange 
according to the wisdom of man. God was not guided by the mind 
of man, however, but rather by His own infinite wisdom. He went 
down to the banks of a little river in the South and picked up a 
great light and fashioned that leader's soul according to His own 
designs to become the great Father of our Country. The mighty 
hosts of liberty, under the guidance of the Heaven-lit soul of Wash- 
ington, smote the hosts of tyranny; and out of the hearts of men in 
the red rage of battle was born this, our America, the sanctuary of 
the lovers of liberty. Men worshipped here in the great memory 
of Washington. 

One day across the sky appeared the cloud of disunion and 
discontent and the sons of the South rose against the sons of the 
North and it seemed as if Liberty's palace were to be split asunder; 
and yet the great God did not desert her but, rather, fashioned a 
man — whom He had picked from a cabin — the great father of unity, 
the savior of the nation; and He placed him side by side with 
Washington. Honest Abe, the splitter of rails and welder of nations, 
took the son of the South and the son of the North, enfolding them 
in each other's arms; he led the people on to unity and peace and 
happiness, and took from the wrists of the blacks the chains that 
never shall bind any people as long as grateful hearts appreciate 
the great life and ideals of Abraham Lincoln, with all its beauty 
and all their sublimity. He dragged the sons of the North from 
every hill and valley and put guns on their shoulders and fire in 
their hearts, that the great gift, liberty, which God gave to every 

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man, no matter how He painted his skin, should still be America's 
proudest boast. Such was the great Father Abraham, and he 
stood side by side with the immortal Washington, another immortal 
in the sanctuary of liberty, one the father of freedom and the 
other the father of unity. 

After years of peace and plenty, at the beck and call of one 
man with a hideous heart, the whole world was enveloped with the 
fires of war. That man dared to march his gray hosts on Belgium, 
whose confines are as sacred as the confines of America. When his 
polluted foot was on Belgian soil and threatening the liberty of the 
earth, to him Theodore Roosevelt was the first to say, "There can 
be no neutrality between right and wrong." And he stood beside 
the brave Belgian just as he stood beside the cringing Cuban but a 
few years before. He gave voice to that wonderful sentiment. 
Let us pay with our bodies for the desires of our souls." And 
America responded, when the light broke on her soul, and the sons 
of Liberty went back across the same seas their fathers had crossed, 
fleeing from oppression, to bring to the land of their fathers and 
the whole world freedom for all, forever. 

No man, whether he wears the toga of state or the sword of 
the conqueror, can take the place of that great soul, as the first in 
fanning the flames and fires of American patriotism, in shaping 
the American soul as it is today, and in sending that American army, 
with the blood of every race coursing in its heart, over to the flaming 
fields of France. That army stemmed the tide. Liberty was saved 
for America and the world. Theodore Roosevelt takes his place 
in the sanctuary with Washington and Lincoln as the Father of 
Liberty's Army and the Guardian of Liberty's home. 

Hence we are met today to pay grateful tribute to one of our 
living dead. A great soul has gone out of our American life. 
Liberty is cypress-crowned. Her eldest son, who in the field of 
every endeavor has stood a bulwark against her enemies, has bowed 
to the Conqueror of Men. The great heart of America finds balm 
in the thought that Theodore Roosevelt still lives. While death 
smites the body the conquering soul is yet unbowed. 

In the memories and hopes of the American people Theodore 
Roosevelt shall have his place as the great apostle of aggressive 

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Americanism. Among those who have laid the foundations and 
raised the superstructure of American ideals his stature is not 
diminished by the presence of the immortals of our history. He 
dips his sword to no one in his love of and service to the land of our 
fathers. In the halls of state and on the flaming field he brought 
the same great heart that always burned with the noble thought 
" Let us pay with our bodies for the desires of our souls." 

While men may have questioned his policies, no man ever 
dared to doubt his loyalty. Man may doubt the word of man but 
the doubts are silenced by the voice of blood on the red lips of a 
wound suffered for a country or a cause. On San Juan Theodore 
Roosevelt spoke with the flaming lips of proven valor to the soul 
of our nation and America never forgets. 

His love of honor and his love of justice were not bound by 
the oceans east and west. No! When honor and justice were 
outraged in Belgium he had the voice of the prophet, crying out in 
the wilderness of American thought, and that voice was never 
stilled until the American sword demanded the lowering of the red, 
white and black flag of the worst tyranny the world has ever seen. 
And this is the one who takes his place today among the living dead 
of America. This is the one who has gone out of life to liberty; 
and though our country's robes are purple with grief and there are 
tears on her cheeks, yet in her face is the calm serenity, born of 
the truth, that Theodore Roosevelt is one of the living dead; that 
his conquering soul is yet unbowed; that the marble shall not shackle 
his spirit; that his soul shall not crumble, but he shall rule us from 
his tomb. 

Liberty places her wreath on the tomb of the first American 
to offer his body to pay for the desires of his soul. It was not given 
him, really, to die in the red fields of France, yet in spirit he did die 
in the red fields of France, for when his son. Captain Roosevelt, 
torn by the blazing guns, lay on the blackened earth, his father's 
soul was in him and his father carried a living wound with him; 
when his other son fell flaming from the skies the great American's 
soul fell flaming with him because his heart and soul were bound 
to the heart and soul of Quentin by ties that God alone can break. 

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And so we may say that malady has not laid low this great 
apostle of aggressive Americanism, but, rather, the draperies have 
been drawn about his couch by Honor; Liberty has clothed him in 
the garments of death, — not at home, but, rather, in far off France; 
his couch is the field of honor, for he has written his name red on 
our great banner and it shall flame fairer and burn brighter year 
on year in the mind and heart of America. 

God grant that this faithful citizen of his country under the 
stars shall enjoy eternal repose in His country over the stars. 

America is richer in her dead. 



Amid the deep silence of the great audience the Marine Band 
of sixty pieces, from the United States Naval Training Station at 
Great Lakes, Illinois, softly played Nearer, My God, lo Thee while a 
company of United States Marines from Quantico, Virginia, stood 
at attention on the stage. This was followed by the sounding of 
taps and the Chairman announced that the hour of meditation in 
memory of our great countryman was at an end. 





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